Nat Turner was born October 2, 1800 in slavery on a plantation of Benjamin Turner in Southampton County.Virginia, about twenty miles from the North Carolina border. His mother was named Nancy, but nothing is known about his father.
Over the years, Turner worked on a number of different plantations. Turner's experience was typical of slaves on southern plantations. He had little freedom; he could not legally marry, travel without his master's permission, own property, or earn money. He was forced to work long, hard hours in the fields for meager rations of food and clothing, and if he refused he faced the whip or other punishment. And, like many slaves, Turner was sold several times to different masters. Each time, he was forced to leave family and friends and move to a different plantation. It was this brutal, demeaning, system of slavery that Nat Turner sought to overthrow. He sought not only his own freedom, but to dismantle the entire system of slavery and liberate African Americans from white tyranny.
In his twenties, Turner was a spiritual leader among his fellow slaves, and many people, including his mother and grandmother, believed that he had been chosen by God to do great things. Then, in the 1820s, he had a series of visions through which he believed God was commanding him to prepare himself for a great battle against evil. During the religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening, many Americans from all walks of life experienced visions or believed that God spoke directly to them, and Nat Turner’s belief that God had destined him for a special purpose reflected the religious fervor of his time.
In 1821, Turner ran away from his overseer, returning after thirty days because of a vision in which the Spirit had told him to "return to the service of my earthly master." The next year, following the death of his master, Samuel Turner, Nat was sold to Thomas Moore. Three years later, Nat Turner had another vision. He saw lights in the sky and prayed to find out what they meant. Then "... while laboring in the field, I discovered drops of blood on the corn, as though it were dew from heaven, and I communicated it to many, both white and black, in the neighborhood; and then I found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters and numbers, with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed in blood, and representing the figures I had seen before in the heavens."
On May 12, 1828, Turner had his third vision: "I heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent, for the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first... And by signs in the heavens that it would make known to me when I should commence the great work, and until the first sign appeared I should conceal it from the knowledge of men; and on the appearance of the sign... I should arise and prepare myself and slay my enemies with their own weapons."
At the beginning of the year 1830, Turner was moved to the home of Joseph Travis, the new husband of Thomas Moore's widow. His official owner was Putnum Moore, still a young child. Turner described Travis as a kind master, against whom he had no complaints.
Then, on February, 1831, there was a solar eclipse of the sun. Turner took this to be the sign he had been promised and confided his plan to the four men he trusted the most, Henry, Hark, Nelson, and Sam. They decided to hold the insurrection on the 4th of July and began planning a strategy. However, they had to postpone action because Turner became ill.
On August 13, the sun appeared blue-green in the sky, and Turner and his friends took this as the final sign.and a week later, on August 21 in what has become known as the Southampton insurrection , Turner and six of his men met in the woods to eat a dinner and make their plans. At 2:00 that morning, they set out to the Travis household, where they killed the entire family as they lay sleeping and joined about 60 other slaves from other plantations in Southampton County,Virginia and started a general revolt, because they could no longer face race oppression and slavery in a hypocritical nation founded on revolutionary ideas of freedom and equality.
As an act of necessity and as a as a means of survival they were forced to use violence as means to an end, in an effort to escape their daily lives of burden and suppression. They killed mercilessly and attacked whites without regard to age or sex believing tht killing all the whites they encountered was the only way they might have a chance of fulfilling the cherished goal of freedom for which thy were willing to sacrifice their lives.
His rebellion became one of the bloodiest and most effective in American history. Igniting a culture of fear, as the insurrection spread from plantation to plantation. Somewhere between 55 to 65 people were killed by the rebels before the revolt was brutally put down. Nat managed to escape, and eluded capture for a couple of months, but on October 30, 1831was arrested He was represented by attorney Thomas R. Gray, who documented Turner’s statement. During his prosecution, Turner pled not guilty, stating that his rebellion was the act of God. On November 11, 1831, he was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging in Jerusalem, Virginia of the crimes of conspiracy to rebel and making insurrection.
He had given all slaves a chance to see freedom and herald it on it's way. He died as he had lived, with courage and conviction, apparently he walked to the hanging tree, without showing a sign of fear, famously refusing to speak any last words. we will always remember him, a man whose breath was forever free.
After he was hanged his body was then mutilated.He never received an official burial and Turner’s headless bones were presumably buried in an unmarked grave.Many believed his death was made a symbol of warning to other would-be insurgents.
And unfortunately in the aftermath, in total, the state executed 55 people, banished many more, and acquitted a few. The state reimbursed the slaveholders for their slaves. But in the hysterical climate that followed the rebellion, close to 200 black people, many of whom had nothing to do with the rebellion, were beaten, tortured and murdered by white mobs. In addition, slaves as far away as North Carolina were accused of having a connection with the insurrection, and were subsequently tried and executed. . New legislation was passed that further restricted people rights. laws were passed to make it illegal to teach slaves to read and write, and their travel was severely restricted.
It would be a long road, but from this point on, there would be no turning back. Nat Turner actions acted as a catalyst for the many struggles that lay ahead, leaving a mythic footprint for those who came later, and he became a powerful symbol of black autonomy and it's fight and struggle for freedom and emancipation.
Over the years, Turner has emerged as a hero, a religious fanatic and
a villain. Turner became an important icon to the 1960s Black power
movement as an example of an African American standing up against white
oppression.
Others have objected to Turner's indiscriminate
slaughtering of men, women and children to try to achieve this end. As
historian Scot French told The New York Times, "To accept Nat
Turner and place him within the pantheon of American revolutionary
heroes is to sanction violence as a means of social change. He has a
kind of radical consciousness that to this day troubles advocates of a
racially reconciled society. The story lives because it's relevant today
to questions of how to organize for change."
His rebellion made it clear that slaves were not content with their enslavement and as a result and August 21, 1831, remains an important date in American History
Turner was the subject of William Styron's 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Confessions of Nat Turner.
Turner’s life and uprising was also the subject of the 2016 film, The Birth of a Nation,
which was directed, written by and starring Nate Parker. The film won
the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize at the 2016 Sundance Film
Festival.
"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read man's history, is man's original virtue, it is through disobedience that progress has been made - through disobedience and through rebellion." - Oscar Wilde
looking at Nat Turner's Legacy
